Democracy in China returns to a debate that was largely in vogue during the 1990s and early 2000s. It poses a meta-question: will China's economic modernization efforts since 1978 lead to widespread democratic reforms? The answer for Jiwei Ci is a clear affirmative.
Through eight chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion, Jiwei Ci argues that Chinese society is largely democratic at present. Therefore, in the absence of a democratic political system to accompany Chinese citizens’ expectations, there is a crisis of legitimacy for the Communist Party of China (CCP). Moreover, the compact that the CCP has with the citizenry to improve their economic life will not compensate for the CCP's legitimacy deficit.
To wit, the “coming crisis” will be further propagated by two aspects: (1) the CCP's revolutionary legacy is waning with the population—especially with the young—and (2) there is a fragility in the next leadership transition, after Xi Jinping...
